Social Media

APML: The Next Big Thing or the Next FOAF?

I have a certain aversion to that which is billed as the “next big thing.” I was a classically trained pianist as a child, and when I saw an interview on Moby in middle-school, I thought techno music was the result of those who liked music and weren’t great at making it. Then in high school, I heard the Prodigy’s Jilted Generation, and changed my mind in an instant. Similarly, I was late to the game by several weeks on Podcasting and Twitter, but now I can’t imagine not having those things in my life either. For some reason, when a new technology is described to me as the ‘next big thing,’ I seem to get a little queasy and opposed to it, but generally I come around.

Right now, attempting to avoid mistakes like those of my past, I’m trying to come around to APML (Attention Profiling Markup Language), because so many folks tell me it’s not only necessary for advertising and marketing on the web to evolve, but there’s a large amount of movers and shakers saying it’s the ‘Next Big Thing.’

The concept of APML is that it allows you to share your “attention profile” data with other users, organisations or programs in the same way you might share your OPML file with someone. The most compelling reason I can gather why the internet world as a whole needs to line up behind the concept of APML because companies are already gathering so much data that used to be considered private and sacred, so we all need to get out in front of it now and define the process of gathering that information, and attempt - as users - to control a bit of that.

Don’t get me wrong; as a marketer and content creator, I can clearly see the benefit of APML. If I know everything you’re interested in down to the core level of the concepts, then I’m able to sell you stuff quite easily. I know exactly what you want and what you’re looking for. It makes marketing efforts ten tons easier, in that respect.

But as someone who is a programmer, project manager, and a consumer, my initial impression was of the many warning flags all along the way. Ultimately, it seems, these warning flags will make implementing APML if not unfeasible, at least in an opportunity/cost sense, inviable. The biggest stumbling block between APML and reality, I think, is the consumer angle. I simply wasn’t seeing the benefit to me, as a denizen of the internet, to share with you the most intimate of intimates of me - that is to say what I’m paying attention to.

Not wanting to be a spoil-sport, I decided to try to get some APML evangelists to try to convince me on the concept. I decided to sit down with Marjolein Hoekstra of CleverClogs, since she was quoted on the APML Wiki, and happened to be on my Twitter list. She did a good job at initiating me on the overlying concepts and introducing me to the companies and individuals (like Chris Saad, one of the folks behind the initial concept) involved with the movement. She pointed me to a number of Web 2.0 style sites that are working with APML currently, including Engagd, Cluztr, Particls and a few others.

Chris Saad, Co-Founder and Chairpersonat APML Workgroup

Marjolein, Chris and other proponents of APML cite a number of reasons why I as a consumer would like APML, as opposed to all the other ways that presently exist for companies to gather data for me. These reasons include better filtering capabilities for your news and information reading tools, the ability to see what is being collected about me, and something that seemed impossible given the goal of APML: increased privacy.

Still, my feelings are mixed, and these are some of the biggest potholes:

Not Everyone Reads the News

Let’s be honest here: I read 106 feeds, and currently an average of 10,000 feed items a month, according to Google Reader. If I used an APML enhanced Google Reader (one that gave me what I “really” wanted, instead of stuff I thought I wanted), perhaps I’d be more efficient in my news consumption - or perhaps I’d miss a lot of stories that fell just outside what Reader thought I wanted because some new blogger wasn’t really great at tagging his content yet.

I don’t expect that more than 1% or so of internet users actually consume as much media as I do, though. And even if it did work to my benefit as a voracious news consumer, you can do a lot of other things on the internet aside from reading blogs, and I think that’s the point. This is an attempt to create a mainstream product who’s primary benefit only works for 1% of the population.

Furthermore, as a developer creating tags and correlations between what the user is doing and paying attention to with my software that can translate to an XML format that is meaningful for others is a daunting task, and it relies on the work of many a lazy content producer on the internet tagging their content correctly. Sites like YouTube, for instance, with a truly mainstream flavor of content producers generally put the most obtuse and non-specific tags on their items. Is it meaningful that my APML file is now populated with 70 videos that are tagged “cool”? Who is helped by that?

This Accountability Sounds Like Hard Work

So let’s say everyone wakes up tomorrow and all their software and websites are APML-enabled. That means the vendors will know exactly what sort of websites I visit and what sort of time I spend read, viewing, and listening to the various media I consume on a daily basis. This is either due to me as a consumer paying attention to my APML feed all the time, or software programmers spending a whole lot of time making the process completely transparent.

As a content producer, I like this, because for instance it tells me in no uncertain terms that my diatribe from Monday’s podcast about Ron Paul is less popular than the live ad read we did in the middle of the show (a distinct possibility). As a consumer, though it scares me, because now various vendors and APML consuming software now knows exactly what sort of porn sites I may be paying the most attention to, for instance, or about research I may have done on militant Islamic websites for a political piece for my blog - something considered dangerous information these days. I’m just not comfortable with that sort of information sitting out there in the public’s hands.

Which Brings Us to Privacy

According to some in the APML workgroups, the beauty of APML is that you control what others get to see about you and your attention. In a fully automated APML world, I’m going to have to spend some time cleaning up my auto-generated APML file, an added hassle that may outweigh potential benefits to me as a user. I mentioned these two deal breakers to Chris Saad, who in his responses started to turn me around on the idea. Once we got past the puzzlement folks like who don’t reside in the United States have for us Americans and our desire to keep our sexual proclivities private, he explained to me the “lossy format” aspect of APML:

That’s actually the advantage of APML - it does not store everything you ever see - only the things that become trends/long term interests. If you develop an interest in terrorism for a few days, then [you might] want to start seeing books about terrorism and some of the best content about it in your other tools? If you don’t click on them that interest will quickly fade away because it only had a small footprint in your attention data. Tools can be set to filter out pornographic viewing - for example Particls ignores pornography - so does Cluztr.

This allayed some of my fears, and I imagine a lot of the fears of folks that have been following this movement from the corners of their eyes. To a certain extent, I think that I’m warming to the idea, and it sounds like a clear solution to what Greg Blonder calls a ‘transparent internet.’ It even addresses the issues of engagement that a lot of New Media folks have been point towards for a while now (if you’re there because it’s your interest instead of it’s page-rank, you’d be a more engaged participant). I’m definitely more open to the concept than I was before, but there are many ramifications of this technology to consider, and I’m sure I’ve missed quite a few. This by no means is the final word on APML, or even my final word on it - only my impressions at the moment. Hopefully, by my journey into the world of APML, I’ve shed a little light what it may mean to the vast majority of us.

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